Retired Marshfield nurse, 87, offers help to Cadet Nurses

Wednesday

Jul 9, 2014 at 7:58 AMJul 9, 2014 at 6:26 PM

Claire Dalco of Marshfield saw the Patriot Ledger article on June 28 about the Quincy luncheon for former U.S. Cadet Nurses, who served during WWII. "I am 87 and not familiar with computers!!" she wrote, but asked for this message to be conveyed to the surviving nurses, in hopes it can help their research.

Sue Scheible The Patriot Ledger @sues_ledger

Claire Dalco of Marshfield saw the Patriot Ledger article on June 28 about the Quincy luncheon for former U.S. Cadet Nurses, who served during WWII. "I am 87 and not familiar with computers!!" she wrote, but asked for this message to be conveyed to the surviving nurses, in hopes it can help their research.

"I was a nurse at one of the hospitals training the girls," Dalco wrote in neat "old-fashioned" handwriting. "Lawrence General Hospital in Lawrence MA had its last Cadet class in September 1945. I was not a student at that time, but followed directly behind that class in February 1946, so I saw many in that class but lost track of all of them!"

Then Claire Dalco provided me with the address of Lawrence General Hospital, and the phone number, and she had even called to find out the name of the director of nursing, which she passed along.

She wishes the surviving Cadet Nurses and all those helping them well in their historcial work. If she were at a younger age, she added, "I would want to work with you in this research. I graduated in a later class at Lawrence General Hospital and I worked full time after that for 20 years and truly loved my work.

"I hoped I've helped somewhat in your research."

What a thoughtful and touching gesture. Claire Dalco has such good memories of and pride in the work she did as a nurse, in an era when the hands-on bedside manner was much more emphasized, and she retains all that professional pride.

I heard from several other retired nurses in their 80s after that article. They expressed similar sentiments. What a wonderful profession nursing has always been and continues to be, with so many new challenges and changes.

I shared the letter with Elizabeth Beecher of Weymouth, a 90-year-old former Cadet Nurse who is doing the research with Shirley Harrow of Quincy. Shirley is also a retired nurse but younger and was not a Cadet Nurse.

Shirley's response: "This area of MA seems to be awash with Cadet Nurses and it started with your first article back in 2009, when you interviewed me about the US Cadets. The outpouring of those patriots started then and it has not stopped.

"The resultant luncheons, at Atria Marina Place in No. Quincy, happened because I couldn’t fit all the wonderful women I had met in my house. To my knowledge, Massachusetts has done more to recognize this number of former Cadets than any other state.

"My life took a turn, with that article, that has enriched it beyond anything I could have imagined."